Rogues

This is tricky. Some of the chapters I would rate a 5, some of them a 1. Like the New Yorker articles that this collects, if the topic is something that I'm not already innately interested in, the writing needs to do some work to get me there. These ones didn't do it.

I feel like if the subject themselves aren't complex or interesting on their own, this author wasn't able to craft something of worth.

That said, at least half of the chapters were great. For those, I would recommend this book.

Patrick Radden Keefe is a long-form journalist, an old-time investigative reporter, who digs deep into a story, and the stories he chooses to investigate thoroughly are stories of bad guys. Rogues is a collection of twelve of Keefe's most fascinating stories of those who kill and steal and cheat others. My favorites were the story of a man who, mysteriously, was able to find and sell rare fine wines; the world's most notorious drug lord, El Chapo; the man who revived the image of Donald Trump through a tv reality show; the woman who feels compelled to defend “the worst of the worst;” and a woman who became a mass shooter.